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Service Console accounts/PAM authentication

wamatha — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:14:16 GMT

I tried this but still the same problem

Apr 24 11:28:51 esx sshd14899: pam_krb5: authenticate error: ASN.1 encoding ended unexpectedly (1859794437)
Apr 24 11:28:51 esx sshd14899: pam_krb5: authentication fails for `xxx'

I have 25 servers that am getting the same error

LinkedIn group

JenMarshall — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 03:03:38 GMT

Great idea posting VMug information on LinkedIn. Our New Mexico chapter intends to incorporate this idea as well. Thanks!

How to shrink or grow (extend) a virtual machines disk

pgenest — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 15:45:32 GMT

We're using LeftHand Networks SANiQ/iSCSI with DL320s and all of our "storage" is to this SAN through iSCSI Software Adapters (vmhba40). Do you know if any of your, (well documented BTW), solutions will still work?

Essential ESX 3.5 & VC 2.5 links

IRQ2006 — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 22:39:13 GMT

Thanks for the information, currently troubleshooting this issue which is listed on your list, I would appreciate any information on this issue or how to resolve it

Incorrect Device Paths for LUNs displayed in Storage Summary - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003064

VMworld 2008

khughes — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:04:10 GMT

You need to release your inner child tom it's quite an experiance

Oh and I'm also signed up for the VMTN breakout should be good

Kyle

Lots of Vmware Links....

dmach12001 — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:34:20 GMT

Thank you for posting these informative VMware links.

Dave...

Woohoo the lounge is open!

tom howarth — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:36:07 GMT

Scotch tasting at Heathrow I don't know what you are talking about, hic!

Tom Howarth
VMware Communities User Moderator

Whats in the VirtualCenter database?

eric.heilig — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:15:50 GMT

Does anybody have similar information specific to VC 2.5? It seems that there have been some major changes with regard to VM performance metrics between 2.0.x and 2.5.

Thanks in advance!

Eric

NFC DEBUG errors

ectran — Sat, 17 May 2008 00:04:41 GMT

These general debug messages activated when VMware Converter is converting data during the conversion. These messages are generally logged for debug purpose should the conversion was stop or not successful during the conversion.

--2008-05-16 16:05:08.770 'BaseLibs' 14818224 info-- NFC DEBUG NfcFssrvrWrite: writing 8 sectors
@ 6182487

--2008-05-16 16:05:08.770 'BaseLibs' 14818224 info-- NFC DEBUG NfcFssrvrGetIoBuf: returning 0xb42
a158

--2008-05-16 16:05:08.772 'BaseLibs' 14818224 info-- NFC DEBUG NfcFssrvrWrite: writing 8 sectors
@ 6182479

--2008-05-16 16:05:08.772 'BaseLibs' 14818224 info-- NFC DEBUG NfcFssrvrGetIoBuf: returning 0xb42
a158

--2008-05-16 16:05:08.880 'BaseLibs' 14818224 info-- NFC DEBUG Closing file

--2008-05-16 16:05:08.886 'BaseLibs' 14818224 info-- DISKLIB-VMFS : "/vmfs/volumes/4820b7a5-184f70f
1-7df2-001cc4ab4d2e/vdi-kiosk-template-PROD/vdi-kiosk-template-PROD-flat.vmdk" : closed.

--2008-05-16 16:05:08.887 'BaseLibs' 14818224 info-- NFC DEBUG NfcServerLoop: sockFd ready for RE
AD

--2008-05-16 16:05:08.887 'BaseLibs' 14818224 info-- NFC DEBUG NfcServerLoop: Received session co
mplete

--2008-05-16 16:05:08.887 'Nfc' 14818224 info-- NFC server loop completed
--2008-05-16 16:05:08.888 'BaseLibs' 12635056 info-- NFC DEBUG Closing file

Looking for detailed information on VM files

ntmtvtd — Tue, 06 May 2008 02:09:22 GMT

Thanks for clearing that up wila

Essential ESX 3.5 & VC 2.5 links

esiebert7625 — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:08:09 GMT

I've put together this link compilation for the new versions, it will also be posted on my website. New additional links will also be added to my website as a I gather them.

Compatibility & Version Info:
VI3 Key Features & Benefits Summary by Version - http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/key_features_35.pdf
VMware Infrastructure Compatibility Matrixes - http://vmware.com/pdf//vi3_35/esx_3/r35/vi3_35_25_compat_matrix.pdf
Details of What's New and Improved In VI3 Version 3.5 - http://www.vmware.com/support/vi3/doc/whatsnew_esx35_vc25.html

Must Read:
RTFM Upgrade guide for ESX 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5 - http://tinyurl.com/3722dz

Release Notes/Install, Upgrade and Patch Guide:
ESX Server 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5 Release Notes - http://www.vmware.com/support/vi3/doc/vi3_esx35_vc25_rel_notes.html
ESX Server 3 Installation Guide - http://vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35/vi3_35_25_installation_guide.pdf
Upgrade Guide - http://vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35/vi3_35_25_upgrade_guide.pdf
ESX Server 3 Patch Management Guide - http://vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35/vi3_35_25_esxupdate.pdf

Additional downloads:
Remote CLI Download - http://www.vmware.com/download/download.do?downloadGroup=VI-RCLI
License Server for ESX 3.5 - http://download3.vmware.com/software/vi/VMware-licenseserver-64192.exe
CPU Compatibility Tool for ESX 3.5 - http://download3.vmware.com/software/vi/CPU_Compatibility-64557.zip

Converter:
VMware Converter Enterprise for VirtualCenter 2.5 Admin Guide - http://vmware.com/pdf/vi3_vec_10_admin_guide.pdf
VMware Converter Enterprise for VirtualCenter 2.5 Release Notes - http://vmware.com/support/vi3/doc/vi3_vec_10_rel_notes.html

Update Manager:
VMware Update Manager Release Notes - http://vmware.com/support/vi3/doc/vi3_vum_10_rel_notes.html
VMware Update Manager Admin Guide - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_vum_10_admin_guide.pdf
VMware Update Manager Sizing Estimator - http://vmware.com/support/vi3/doc/vi3_vum_10_sizing_estimator.xls

Latest Hardware Compatibility Guides:
Systems - http://vmware.com/pdf/vi3_systems_guide.pdf
I/O - http://vmware.com/pdf/vi3_io_guide.pdf
Storage/SAN - http://vmware.com/pdf/vi3_san_guide.pdf
Backup Software - http://vmware.com/pdf/vi3_backup_guide.pdf

Blog & News Articles:
VMware ESX 3.5 goes live with key new features - http://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid94_gci1285629,00.html
What's new in ESX 3.5 & VC 2.5? -
http://virtualgabe.wordpress.com/2007/12/08/what%e2%80%99s-new-in-esx-35-vc-25-part-2/
http://virtualgabe.wordpress.com/2007/12/08/what%e2%80%99s-new-in-esx-35-vc-25-part-3/
http://virtualgabe.wordpress.com/2007/12/08/what%e2%80%99s-new-in-esx-35-vc-25-part-4/
VMware VI Client 2.5 does not support 64-bit workstations - http://www.dabcc.com/article.aspx?id=6674

Relevant KB Articles:
Licensing:
Updates to your VMware VI3 Starter Licenses - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003299
Changes in licensing for VI3 Standard Edition When upgrading to VI 3.5 - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003301
Understanding VI 3.5 Licensing: Server and Host-based Licensing Models - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003295

ESX 3.5:
Installing ESX Server throws an "Anaconda Error" in the Partitioning Options screen - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003217
VMFS Partition cannot be created for "Typical" ESX Server Installation if Prior installation is detected - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003309
IBM System x3850 M2 and System x3950 M2 Servers fail to connect to 100Mbps Networks - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003226
Installing the Tivoli Storage Manager Client on the Service Console results in an error - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003142
Virtual Machine on a RDM Shared Storage becomes invalid after migration from ESX Server 2.5.x to ESX Server 3.5 or 3i - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003092
Vmotion is disabled after ESX Server upgrade - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003060
Certain Special Characters cause software iSCSI Initiator CHAP Configuration corruption - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003095
Connection to ESX Server host through VI Client is lost if you attempt to delete several VM's at once from the Datastore Browser - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003250
Storage Devices connected to McData FC Switch through Qlogic adapters occasionally do not re-appear after reboot - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003250
Snapshot operations submitted directly to an ESX Server Host during Storage vMotion corrupts Virtual Machine data - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003114
Storage vMotion on a VM with I/O intensive workload may result incorrectly in a timeout error - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003276
Upgrading to ESX Server 3.5 when the Root Parition is nearly full might cause Incomplete System Configuration - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003311
Restarting Hostd (mgmt-vmware) on ESX Server hosts restarts Hosted Virtual Machines where VM Auto Startup/Shutdown is enabled - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003312
ESX Server becomes temporarily unresponsive under a Heavy I/O load - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003039
Consolidation of Large or Deeply Nested Snapshots using VirtualCenter, SDK or VCB might take longer on ESX Server 3.5 than on ESX Server 3.0.x - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003308

Consolidated Backup 1.1:
Upgrading Consolidated Backup version 1.0.x to 1.1 causes the installer to hang - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003045
Consolidated Backup cannot create Quiesced Snapshots of VM's running Windows Vista - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003074
VCB 1.1 Command Line utility connection to port 902 causes an error message - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003088

VC 2.5:
When you install SQL Server Express on a System where SQL Native Client is present the installation might fail with error - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003076
VirtualCenter Server Fails to Start after your replace Default SSL Ceritifcates with Custom Certificates - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003070
Error Message During Installation: error 1603: error installing Windows installer engine - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003036
Administrative Credentials are Required for Oracle and SQL Database when Installing or Upgrading VirtualCenter - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003052
Client-side CD-ROM or Floppy can become disconnected - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003118
VirtualCenter Server does not detect changes in Host IP Address unless SSL Certificate Verification has been enabled - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003066
Permission problem if host had been in lockdown mode - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003117
Virtual Machines might lose Network Connectivity when moved to a different Port Group - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003061
Powering on Virtual Machines with multiple PCI Devices might fail - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003048
Incorrect Device Paths for LUNs displayed in Storage Summary - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003064
VirtualCenter Consolidation service Usernames and Passwords must use only ASCII characters - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003096
VI Client installation fails on Windows Vista Business Edition with enabled Anti-virus software - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003079
VirtualCenter Server might crash in a cluster with Manual or Partially Automatic DRS and Automatic DPM - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003027
Deleting Snapshots of VM's with Heavy disk I/O might cause host to be Disconnected from VirtualCenter - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003024
Paravirtualization option is not Disabled for Unsupported Operating Systems - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003008
VirtualCenter Server installation fails or results in an error if your system does not have MDAC 2.8 SP1 or later installed - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003160
Installing Update Manager with Unified Installer might faile if Disparate Databases are used - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003277
Some Alarms may disappear after upgrading to VirtualCenter 2.5 - http://kb.vmware.com/selfservicekb/1003072
VirtualCenter Database upgrade fails with an exception when a Password that contains Apostrophes or Double Quotes is used - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003049
The VirtualCenter Server might Crash when using an older ODBC driver with Oracle 9i - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003049
Guest Operating System Standby feature removed in VirtualCenter Server 2.5 - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1002414
Cannot specify Destination Folder on Non-default Datacenter when Cloning Virtual Machines - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003075
VirtualCenter Service will not start on a machine with non-Ascii characters in it's Machine Name - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003075
vMotion from ESX Server 3.5 hosts to ESX Server 3.0.x hosts causes the console sessions of the migrated VM's to become blank - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003038
Automatic VMware Tools upgrade does not upgrade to the latest version on VM's with Insufficient space in the Root parition - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003051

Eric Siebert
VMware Communities User Moderator
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Visit my website: http://vmware-land.com
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Thanks for putting this together. Very useful!

Make this a sticky!

Updates to the list...

Other:
Technote: Round-Robin Load Balancing - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35_25_roundrobin.pdf
Technote: Enabling Netflow on Virtual Switches - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35_25_netflow.pdf
Technote: Configuring and Troubleshooting N-Port ID Virtualization - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35_25_npiv_config.pdf
Technote: Virtual Machine Failure Monitoring - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35_25_vmha.pdf
ESX 3.5 Installation Video (You Tube) - http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=qobhariBEec

Blog & News Articles:
Review: VMware Infrastructure 3.5 builds on the base - http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9053158

Relevant KB Articles:

VC 2.5:
For SQL Server 2000, Do Not Grant or Revoke the System Administrators Role to Satisfy the Database Permission Requirements When Upgrading to VirtualCenter 2.5 - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003346

Eric Siebert
VMware Communities User Moderator
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Visit my website: http://vmware-land.com
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This is an excelent set of information within such a short time. Thank you very much.

Great info. Thank you!

FredPeterson wrote:Make this a sticky!

I second that!

Very nice post, sticky or not, added to bookmarks

The Remote CLI documentation I found only discusses svmotion. Is there a document that describes all the commands?

This document was generated from the following thread: Essential ESX 3.5 & VC 2.5 links

Looks like an old friend is back in 3.5

RParker — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 05:38:08 GMT

Maybe they were developing the code on a VM with a snapshot... they forgot the commit!

In any case, your wording was hysterical.. good for a laugh...

There's another Guru in town!

Jasemccarty — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 18:34:59 GMT

Good job buddy...

ESX 3.5 Released today?

Dave.Mishchenko — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 18:19:07 GMT

I'd have to agree with Thomas on this. It's like giving candy to a bunch of kids that have eaten nothing but spinach for a month.;)

For example, a couple of quotes

BUT.. when 3.5 is released, we will have it that day. I like to stay current.... I will GLADLY be the guinnea pig..

I'll just have to hope that VC upgrades correctly...if not it's an easy reinstall anyway.

Not to single those people out, but are they refering to production? I'd agree with the comment on quickly adopting consumer products (although I wouldn't list Vista) but those items won't affect the corporate network as much as ESX. Monday's posts will be I upgraded to 3.5 on the weekend and everything is down / my VMs are off line, etc.:) Now for the test lab, the kids will have to wait for the Christmas train ride until next year so that I can try out a few new things. But production can surely wait a while until some of the things that missed testing get found.

VMware a Dead Duck

danpalacios — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 21:19:06 GMT

Three thoughts to throw in here:

1. The legal landscape has shifted slightly since the "glory" days of Netscape and Novell. Microsoft has split (sort of) the hypervisor from the OS - likely to avoid another huge anti-trust beating from the EU.

2. 3i will likely be very attractive to SMB (with low cost and ease of use while still providing an upgrade path). The cost of 3i + 4 std win licenses is equivalent to 1 ent win license.

3. ESX is a platform. is as much akin to blade servers and mainframes as to OSs. This makes our Novell, Netscape analogies a little less accurate. Maybe we should be looking at MSSQL vs Oracle for our comparison.

script to display any snapshots in your environment

NorbK — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 14:24:20 GMT

Since the latest VC upgrade that forced the default database from master to a different DB, the snaps.vbs program was broke. Turns out line 33 should have DBQ=+NewDatabaseName+ changed to DATABASE=+NewDatabaseName+ otherwise it will always query the default master database which no longer contains data.

Congrats to our newest Guru!!!

tom howarth — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 21:39:26 GMT

Nooooooooooooooooooooooo, run Hide, the colective is after me

Kind Regards

Tom,

New version of VMware Launchpad

esiebert7625 — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 14:17:17 GMT

That's a sore point with me and other users, there are a bunch available from 2007 but they still have not released all (majority) of them. I added my comments below a while ago to a VMworld thread as it appears you have also. I encourage everyone else to let VMware know how you feel about this.

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/109207?tstart=0
http://www.vmworld.com/vmworld/blogs/blogs/2007/10/29/new-sessions-on-nov-9th
http://www.vmworld.com/vmworld/thread/1085

I have to agree, this seems financially motivated to wring every last buck out of VMworld. Last year all sessions were released 1-2 months after VMware was over. There is absolutely no reason (beside greed) to not release these sessions to the public after VMworld is over. Releasing all these sessions to the public as soon as possible after VMworld would be a benefit to VMware so there existing customers are better educated and potential customers can get more information on VI3 and it's capabilities. With all the new virtualization players on the block VMware needs to do everything they can to keep their customers happy.

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VI3 Book

esiebert7625 — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 22:08:46 GMT

Great news, thanks Scott!

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Thanks, Eric
Visit my website: http://vmware-land.com
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Interesting security read...

Texiwill — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 18:15:50 GMT

Hello,

Well that was an interesting read. The article is succinct and the post referenced was humorous to say the least. True no one writes perfect code the first time, well you may once in your career... However we do have to deal with what is out there... It is a wide new world... grin

Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky, author of the forthcoming 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', publishing January 2008, (c) 2008 Pearson Education. Available on Rough Cuts at http://safari.informit.com/9780132302074

VMware Launchpad

buckethead — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 11:45:13 GMT

Eric, thanks that will come in very handy.

hmmm...

esiebert7625 — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 01:45:22 GMT

$3,500 for a customer success story?!?!?! What the hell?

http://www.amazon.com/VMware-Sprint-Customer-Dan-Kusnetzky/dp/B000AM1VTC/ref=sr_1_16/103-4700207-4483063?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191548639&sr=1-16

What happened this morning?

rsa911 — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:00:44 GMT

John, I can now access the site normally but experience some caching issue I did not noticed before (but then it could be local to my config, with the recent issues it's too easy to say it's the new forum software causing the problem )

caching issue are visible when re-opening for the 2nd/3rd/..... time a post that had been updated: IE 7 will always give me the previous version, I need to manually refresh the page to get the latest version

speed is currently "fast" compared to the previous days, but still behind the old forum, probably due to all the eye candy added

Rollback date

oreeh — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 10:54:24 GMT

Frankly I am getting a little annoyed at trying to force a
piece of software down my neck I do not want, I have tried
FireFox and many of the other Open Source browsers and found
them to be wanting in one form or another.

Tom, I'm not saying that this site shouldn't work with IE.
I only offered a possible workaround until the IE issues are fixed.

It really doesn't bother me which browser you use... just use the one
you are happy with - I will do the same

I just want this site to work with IE6 and 7 the most used
browsers in the world. I find it hard to believe, well no
actually I don't, as VMware are a NIX based Software
producer. That this forum has not been properly tested
against the major versions of the most popular browsers.

If today most of the JS stuff really gets stripped out and the rich text

editor gets removed, there really shouldn't be a problem with IE
anymore.

Menu dropdowns driving me nuts

tom howarth — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 09:07:24 GMT

It's the intermittent manner of this things that irritate me, when I want them to drop down they don't and when I don't they do. AGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

New HA Features in VC 2.0.2

oreeh — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 21:21:03 GMT

Thanks for the heads-up!

Missing text entry field

JohnTroyer — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 20:50:29 GMT

I think I posted in another thread (and we are going to post an update/summary by end of day) that I think this is because all the js didn't load.

We are stripping out a lot of menu js today and I'm also investigating how to disable the editor.

SLOWWWWW......

dalepa — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 04:02:18 GMT

It would be nice to get daily updates on the slowness problem.

Many errors still... Loading pages take 10-50 seconds. Many pages timeout.... I had to hit refresh several times just to get Rich Text to come up.

I see no progress since the switchover.

I spend most of my day troubleshooting issues like this one... It appears that you have a major issue with your app or database server(s).

I can't believe that you have not switched back to the old system until the vendor fixes the problem and delivers a workable system. Start up the old system and put a Beta link for those who want to test this slooooow site.

If there was every a time to use the power of vmware snapshots, this is it! *SNAP back*!

Vista/IE7 and XP/IE7

Helpful now worth 5?

petedr — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 04:10:15 GMT

thanks Robert, I see it updating now.

Top Member Lists do not show points

petedr — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 00:51:31 GMT

John I was going to ask about the icons but see you answered that here, good deal.

New forum!

daniel_uk — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 11:31:34 GMT

Larstr, I agree.

Its more CPU lock stepping like www.marathontechnologies.com

Dan

New security article

tom howarth — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 10:32:53 GMT

interesting, quite like the typical negative comments of the "Security experts" after the article.

Top 10 things to do/see at VMworld

kix1979 — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 23:23:27 GMT

FYI, here are my photos from the week.

http://www.thb3.com/Site/My_Albums/Pages/VMworld.html

Well you knew it had to happen eventually....

TLKern — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 18:55:07 GMT

We used to have just upper management managing by AMBWs (airline magazine buzz words). Now we will have the next level of management managing by the 'Dummies' book.

Maybe they will at least get some of the terminology correct.

Shrinking a virtual disk using vmkfstools and dd

ronzo — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 05:45:51 GMT

Hi-

If you want to shrink a disk, like you could in ESX 2, we include a utility with esXpress that does that.

Lets use a 40 GB to 10 GB example.
To shrink the disk, you would need to do the following:

1. In the VM, shrink the partition, always make it smaller then you want. Shrink it down to 9 GB. This is to make sure you never clip the end of the disk. I've always used this product, it's never let me down: http://www.partition-manager.com and it's easy to install a copy into Barts or not.
(We used to professionally do P2Vs from 2001-2006, and I've personnally shrunk thousands of VMDKs with Partition Manager.)

2. Now with the VM powered off, run this command.
/home/phd/bin/_phd_resize "path/to/vmdk-flat" "size you want in bytes" --force

For Example:
/home/phd/bin/_phd_resize '/vmfs/volumes/LOCAL/Test/test-flat.vmdk' 10737418240 --force

3. Now that the flat is shrunk, you need to adjust the stub file, and put in the correct values.
Use this link: http://www.esxpress.com/tools/wrapgen.php

4. When you boot up the VM, stretch out the partition for the remaining 1 GB.

Your done, shrunken VMDK.

The _phd_resize command is in bytes, not GB or K.
10 GB * 1024 * 1024 *1024

You can do this math in the shell as :
echo "$((10*1024*1024*1024))"

thanks
ron

Top 10 Reasons to go to VMworld

BrianG — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 22:18:07 GMT

Oh, that kind of news!

V xabj abguvat, abbbbbbbguvat

Interesting article on VMware/NSA...

Texiwill — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 15:56:52 GMT

Hello,

I remember reading that this was already being done at some government locations (perhaps not by the NSA).... Now I wish I remembered where I read that.... I need to start keeping notes...

Best regards,
Edward

VMware books

tom howarth — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 21:22:24 GMT

You Americans are really going to have to learn to Spell.

You gotta love HP...

grasshopper — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:36:35 GMT

A couple years back, IBM shipped me 100 x445 8ways, with ~50 of them being bad. It was a faulty shipment that was hecho en mexico.

Bottom line is, all hardware vendors have similar problems. Plus, ESX drives the hardware to its full potential, so we typically find these hardware problems more with VMware than in regular servers.

Now the port replicator, that is truly funny!

Interesting security articles on VM's escaping into the host OS.

esiebert7625 — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 03:53:12 GMT

if you're a sci-fi fan, both the cat and someone else have escaped the box, anyone know which books?

A new Champion has arrived!

paulmack — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:02:11 GMT

Well done Oliver. Your posts have indeed helped me out in the past.

Paul

2006 VMworld presentations

esiebert7625 — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 17:26:51 GMT

Cool!

Let me ask this also, is there a front end web page or link that shows all the previous VMworld presentations by year. So if someone wanted to see all the presentations from 2005 they can see them all displayed in one spot like the 2006 currently are. It seems for the 2005 preentations you have to know the exact URL to get to each one.

File not found error on technical paper

RDellimmagine — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 21:32:05 GMT

We're working on it -- this will be fixed today. Thanks for the heads-up.

Virtual Machine Configuration Parameters

Intravenusx — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 18:16:41 GMT

This is a maturation process for a software company. Right now the company I work for is looking to provide so much more in our documentation because people are actually interested in reading and it saves a ton of time in the long run because your support lines aren't jammed with trivial how to questions. With the IPO, they are getting too big to deal with stuff like this and will probably have some document in the future. GREAT INTERN PROJECT, HINT, HINT!!!

Congrats to the latest Virtuoso!

tom howarth — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 21:53:14 GMT

We should all be made honourary VCI's

Congrats to the latest Virtuoso!

petedr — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 01:55:47 GMT

good deal

What the heck is this?

esiebert7625 — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 21:10:23 GMT

HP's reply:

The software will be there as of Friday. In the future there will be no delay in getting the software. I am sorry you ran into the initial setup glitch.

Beware Patch2!

iborrero — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 11:42:36 GMT

Hi, (sorry for the previous post, I was logged in with a different account)

I just wanted to infinite thank everybody and specially bister for his marvellous work here.

I updated this morning a 10 node instalation (previously I investigated thoroughly in the forums) and 5 out of the 10 nodes (the even numbered nodes, a funny thing) appeared disconnected.

I followed the stated procedure and worked 100% perfectly for me.

So, thanks once again, and let's hope that these VMware guys make it easier for future updates.

Regards.

New Virtuoso!

Anders — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 14:24:27 GMT

haha!

I can't be accused of being a points groupee...

- Anders

Linux support

aleph0 — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 11:37:09 GMT

Pls,
send me postcards from your country with the number of linux boxes converted with the procedure I will appreciate very much and I'll publish it in the blog
address of mine is :

Manlio Frizzi
v.le Tibaldi 59
20136 - Milano
Italy

tia
\mf

Converter error starting service

sashidharkochi — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 01:17:10 GMT

i have installed vc21 and then started installing convertor in side VM. i am getting the error 1920.service vmware convertor service (vmware-convertor) failed to start. verify that you have sufficient privileges to start system services and before that i got runtime visual c++ error.please tell me what i need to do.it is important for me

VC Add-on

Mike_Laverick — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 21:14:31 GMT

Not yet - but Richard's stuff is pretty reliable... and have always been impressed with his offerings...

Regards
Mike

Announcement: new VMware website

jasonboche — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 15:45:19 GMT

I remember the good old days when I had time to maintain a website Not as great of a website as yours, but nonetheless my home on the internet. Those were the good old days. Pizza and Macaroni and Cheese dinners, beer drinking, sleeping in on weekends. Just me and my two cats who never gave me any guff about anything. Now everything's different. I'm not saying better or worse, just different.

Converter 3.0.1 port 443

derekvli — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 19:03:11 GMT

Thanks for the information. I was looking in the update notes for 3.0.1 and should have looked in the reg. manual. Thanks again..

Virtual Center console connections

esiebert7625 — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 14:09:56 GMT

Never found a way to do this, hopefully a future release will support this.

You know you've been using Vmware too much...

Juan Casares — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 20:44:46 GMT

Woops, time to revert to the last snapshot... oh no!

Next meeting

bbhuber — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:55:23 GMT

What about comparing VMware to other virtualization options (both hardware and software) on the market, in terms of security, performance, backup ability, etc?

Any possibility of getting VMware on other hardware, such as IBM zSeries hardware? Or are we doomed to taking what we can get out of IBM?

Thanks!
Brandie

Memory limit slider

Ken.Cline — Sat, 26 May 2007 00:54:59 GMT

The limit should be constrained to the max that can be assigned to a VM (i.e. 16GB) - the reservation slider should be bound by the actual assigned limit value...

ESX 3 Service Console Guide

esiebert7625 — Wed, 23 May 2007 13:13:50 GMT

Thanks Mike, your guides are fantastic and I frequently refer people to them.

HUGE collection of Vmware links - updated

esiebert7625 — Mon, 14 May 2007 20:33:57 GMT

Thanks for the kind words, yeah I do enjoy this stuff, probably too much. I actually just added a Paypal link on the home page.

Interesting anti-virtualization article...

moneill — Thu, 10 May 2007 10:18:10 GMT

Agreed it looks like ways to spook management into parting with money for his product!

Blades - any change in technology requires some education, in this case managing blade nics
is different from nics in discrete servers, but surely you wouldn't describe it as more difficult.

Token ring - any organisation that doesn't known the physical networking layer that it has implemented,
has a bunch of issues that are nothing to do with virtualisation. Yes you need to convert them to ethernet
before you p2v (because most p2v tools don't have TR drivers), like we did, no big deal.

Mike

Vmware Converter Best Practices

meistermn — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 10:57:28 GMT

0) Preparation
- Defrag the disks W2K3
- clean up c:\temp
- run chkdsk

ESX & VC Versions

esiebert7625 — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 00:38:41 GMT

Thanks, yeah I'm addicted to Vmware, actually it was a toss up between doing yard work and studying VMware and Vmware won out.

Purging old tasks/events in VirtualCenter

esiebert7625 — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 15:10:12 GMT

I thought I would share this procedure I documented to purge old tasks and events in VirtualCenter. I initially opened a support case on this with Vmware because I wanted to get rid of the older tasks and events in VirtualCenter and there was nothing built into VC that would automatically do this. Vmware supports response was basically we don't support the maintenance, backup or data integrity of the VC database. They said you have to delete the data from the tables manually. So I did some research and put together this procedure in case anyone is interested. The tasks and event tables can get pretty large, mine had about 200,000 rows for just 4 ESX servers.

How can I purge old Event and Task data from VirtualCenter?

VirtualCenter does not support doing this directly, the only way you can do this by deleting directly from the database tables. It is strongly recommend to have a functional backup of the VC database before clearing these tables in case of an unforeseen problem. Also the the VC service must be stopped in order to avoid data corruption. This is not a supported procedure by Vmware but should be in my opinion, these tables can get pretty large in big environments as every single task and event is preserved in the database.

The tables where the data is stored are VPX_TASK (Tasks) and VPX_EVENT, VPX_EVENT_ARG (Events). The VPX_EVENT_ARG will usually have more rows then the VPX_EVENT table. This is because the VPX_EVENT table only has one row per event but the VPX_EVENT_ARG table can have multiple rows per event (The link between the 2 tables is the EVENT_ID column).

o Shutdown the VirtualCenter service
o Connect to the database server that is hosting the VC database with a SQL browser/client. You can use a free tool like WinSQL Lite (http://www.snapfiles.com/get/winsql.html) for this.
o To delete all data in the tables type: delete from VPX_TASK then delete from VPX_EVENT and then delete from VPX_EVENT_ARG and finally Commit
o Optionally you can do truncate table VPX_TASK then truncate table VPX_EVENT and then truncate table VPX_EVENT_ARG (Truncate is faster and does not use as much undo space as delete)
o To selectively delete data older then 30 days: delete from VPX_TASK where complete_time < sysdate - 30)
o To selectively delete data older then 30 days from VPX_EVENT and VPX_EVENT_ARG is trickier because VPX_EVENT_ARG does not have a date field and it tied to the events in VPX_EVENT by the Event_id field.
o First delete from the child table (VPX_EVENT_ARG): delete from vpx_event_arg where event_id in (select a.event_id from vpx_event_arg a, vpx_event b where a.event_id = b.event_id and create_time < sysdate - 30)
o Next commit the delete by typing Commit
o Then delete from the parent table (VPX_EVENT): delete from vpx_event where create_time < sysdate 30
o Finally commit again by typing Commit
o Start the VirtualCenter service

Running VirtualCenter in a Virtual Machine

esiebert7625 — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 14:54:54 GMT

This subject has been brought up a number of times in this forum. Vmware just released a great white paper on the subject.

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_vc_in_vm.pdf

Virtual Machine losing network connectivity under load

esiebert7625 — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 20:18:23 GMT

Ha, this was a funny one. I had 2 VM's with the same MAC address, the one VM only had one NIC with that MAC and the other VM had two NIC's one of them with that MAC. I was testing changing the MAC addresses on the NIC a while back because we have a application that we moved from a physical server to a virtual one that was licensed by MAC address. Evidently I tested it on one VM a long time ago and more recently tested it on another VM. So periodically the one VM with 2 NIC's (the duplicate MAC one had limited connectivity) would interrupt the other VM because the switch was confused by the duplicate MAC addresses.

Oh well, all is good now, thanks for the replies.

Are you a Windows guy who is new to Linux?

ICT-Freak — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 10:11:11 GMT

Great document.

Thanx for sharing!

Message was edited by:
ICT-Freak

Java errors

Daryll — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 17:21:39 GMT

Another update:

OK the vendor was able to pinpoint the problem.

We have an HTML filter installed which makes it so that people cannot post RAW HTML into a forum posting. Some image embedding makes it by the filter, but most raw HTML does not.

The charcter limit for this HTML filter is 262144 characters, or 2^18. It's a hard coded limit of the HTML filter I have installed. Anytime any single posting exceeds that character limit, it blows up the forum post.

For the time being, I'm going to track down and delete the currently defunct messages in the Converter forum (the only place where I've found them). After I'm done doing that, I'm going to enable attachments in that forum and post an announcement asking people to post exceedingly long log files as attachments.

That should help immensely.

In the long term, the next revision of our forum application has already been released, and we're evaluating an upgrade to that version now. There are a lot of new features, including a new HTML filter and an updated search engine.

Stay tuned

-Daryll

Disabling HA does not really disable it.

esiebert7625 — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 13:28:41 GMT

They are actually aware of it, I have a case open with them. The last response I receive from HP tech support (it was escalated to Vmware) is below...

"VMware has responded to me that these indeed are known issues
that they are aware of. I have requested further clarification from them
on details of the problems and whether these will will be addressed
in future patch or release."

vm-support error

EHKlaas — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 11:37:49 GMT

It's a know bug on big servers with very long dmi inform tables.

( Sign/unsigned problem inside dmidecode v 2.2 )
Please see also Red Hat Bugzilla 112355.

Problem fixed with dmidecode V2.3 or greater.

No patches this month...

dm3281 — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 00:32:18 GMT

Yeah, I would love an RSS feed for this or some e-mail notification. Who has time to keep checking for these things????

Reboot virtual machine

esiebert7625 — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 20:30:24 GMT

I was basically trying to do this to schedule servers that need a reboot off-hours. So if we installed software or a patches during the day we could schedule the reboot at night without any intervention. It would be nice and simple if VC could do this. I'll check out the vmware-cmd route.

Thanks

Restoring NDMP backups

esiebert7625 — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 19:06:54 GMT

We are in the process of migrating off a NetApp Filer and using Win2K3 VM's attached to SAN disk instead. One potential problem is that all of our historical backups on the Filer are done using NDMP and according to Veritas there is no way to restore NDMP backups directly to a Windows or Linux server. We use Netbackup 5.1 as our backup software. Is there anyway to setup a special VM running either Linux or Windows that could emulate NDMP so restores from old tapes can be performed if needed. I also saw a few NAS virtual appliances but it did not look like they supported NDMP. Any other way of accomplishing this so we don't have to keep the old NetApp around?

Thanks

Learning scripting

hrobinson — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 17:04:09 GMT

You should maybe start with the VI Perl Toolkit which you can download at http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/viperltoolkit.

I suggest that you download ActivePerl from ActiveState at www.activestate.com.

Also, you can refer to www.run-virtual.com for help in installing this environment.

The Perl Toolkit is still in Alpha but definitely is the way to start with scripting. Examples are there and there are several more that have been posted here.

In the future, you can assume that there will be a full installer so that you can install and start using scripts.

H

Denver Vmware professionals

esiebert7625 — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 04:28:18 GMT

Hey thanks, I didn't even know those were there. I had always looked here: http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/usergroups/usergroups_local.html and all you could do was register...

Virtual machine BIOS screen display time

bister — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 06:20:09 GMT

Sometimes it's not even possible to see the console output for any keystroke the BIOS awaits (boot menu, bios menu etc.)

As you statet this is not a BIOS problem. IMO it's the VMware console that is too slow.

Respectfully,
Christian

Network traffic between VM's.

heathseals — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 15:13:34 GMT

Take a look at the following paper from VMworld. It describes vSwitch boundaries among other things :

http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/tac9689-b.pdf

How to see if a service is running

acr — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 21:33:44 GMT

It probably is simply, it may just be that the service is not known by those names..

Change DNS Servers

esiebert7625 — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 18:50:06 GMT

Simple and easy. Not being a Linux guru I wasn't sure. Thanks

Converter feature request

esiebert7625 — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 17:26:28 GMT

P2V shows you exactly how much data is being copied, how much is left and the current transfer rate. Converter just shows you a percent done with each task. It would be really nice if Converter showed more detail on the data copy like P2V did so we know exactly what is going on with the data transfer. The percent done does not help that much because it is not all that accurate and keeps changing.

How does Converter handle open files?

pangchen — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 21:41:40 GMT

The snapshot creates a point-in-time reference and tracks block-level changes to the files in the filesystem. The cloning uses the snapshot and the files to assemble a reasonable picture of what the entire disk looked like. I imagine that if you start deleting files while the cloning is in progress, those files will not make it across in the cloning.

Domain controller hign mem usage

snowbird — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 18:58:22 GMT

When a Microsoft OS boots up it takes all the available ram at first that it is assigned. Then VMware does it's magic and takes back what isn't being used.

Viewing Resource Allocation settings for multiple servers

impensb — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 18:30:00 GMT

You are welcome. Thanks for the points !!

I'm switching back to P2V 2.1

pangchen — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 23:46:18 GMT

It's a trade-off between less data to copy at a slower pace (file-based) vs. more data to copy at a faster pace (block-based). If you are adjusting up/down by just a few MB then it's probably not worth it resizing the volumes.

How do you get a Enterprise license?

esiebert7625 — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 20:31:37 GMT

Once you activate the license from the Vmware website you have the option to either email the license to you and/or download the license. The license is just a .lic file.